Over the weekend, Google quietly added Sun's StarOffice productivity suite -- the software that became OpenOffice.org and is now based upon it -- to Google Pack. The free collection of applications for Windows now numbers 13, and features other programs such as Skype, RealPlayer, Adobe Reader and Spyware Doctor.

Typically, a new product being added to Google Pack wouldn't warrant much interest (especially since the first 12 were available for free previously), but StarOffice normally costs $70, and the move could be seen as a challenge to the dominance of Microsoft Office. It's also a sign that Google isn't interested in building or branding its own offline office suite, as was rumored back in 2005.